Your Best Bets at This Weekend’s Bushwick Walkabout Festival

You guys have heard of this Bushwick place, right? Apparently it’s real close to Williamsburg and, this weekend, challenging its neighboring local music mecca in the unsaid “which ‘hood can gather the most young bands in a concentrated area” competition with the inaugural Bushwick Walkabout Festival taking over the outdoor stage at Brooklyn Fireproof.

There’s a good deal to pick from this weekend if you happen to be in the mood for some indie rock, between the Village Voice‘s not-quite-Siren 4Knots Festival (featuring the mighty Titus Andronicus, the charming Eleanor Friedberger and more) and a particularly good cluster of local bands at Monster Island Basement, but it’s always nice to take a chance on an unknown kid. Or band, as the case may be. For that, BirdDog Productions (the guys partly responsible for running/booking 285 Kent) and RethinkPopMusic bring us Walkabout. There will be bands, 14 of them to be exact, and way-cheap tickets. And there will be free alcohol. The whole time. The problem, then, isn’t hydration or going broke, but who to see. After some quick listens of the lineup, we highlight a few bands we think sound particularly promising:

Grandchildren – Friday, 11pm Drifting, sturdy-voiced folk-pop, sounding not unlike Band of Horses if they exclusively played beach parties. Fans of The Dodos might also want to take note.

Fort Lean - Saturday, 5:15pmIt feels really good to tell you that Fort Lean’s song “Beach Holiday” is not very beachy. And it feels even better to tell you that the rest of their material is neither aggressively lo-fi or obnoxiously dancey, but rather played with just the right amount of conviction and good ol’ fashion banging on instruments… while still being slightly lo-fi and dancey.

Cold Fronts – Saturday, 3pm These guys like life (see: “Rainbows”), and it’s hard to hate them for it when they seem so unconcerned with making a “serious artists’ album.” There’s merit in wanting to make music to soundtrack a really good Saturday night too, you know? And this Saturday should be exactly that.